Barrio Cartography: The Present Sense is a site-specific dance piece written by Randy Reyes. The piece is several hours long and maps an eight-mile journey from the artist’s childhood home in West New York, New Jersey to Shuaspace, an artspace in downtown Jersey City.

In traveling from his home to the gallery, the artist maps out the places and forces that shaped his maturation into an enlivened queer activist and dancer. The space inside the gallery constructed the ideal that to which he and his troupe had journeyed. My role was to provide an improvised sound score that was in dialogue with the dancers’ final act of communion.

Prior to the performance, I was given a list of references from which to work. Some examples include cacophony, prayers, and bodily warmth.

I took cues from this list to build my sound palette for the performance. Putting those elements together I created a seven-part score with the following rough structure: